Search form

TRENDING:

Poll: Women more likely to say social media has negative effect on society

Women are more likely to say that social media has a negative effect on society, according a new Hill-HarrisX survey released Wednesday.

The national survey found that 62 percent of female respondents said that interactions on social networks have a negative impact, compared to 58 percent of male respondents.

Overall, 60 percent of those polled believe that social media has a negative impact, while 25 percent said it has more of a positive impact. Fifteen percent said social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have no impact at all.

The survey comes amid reports that online hate speech and harassment are on the rise.

One in 3 Americans reported facing some form of online harassment, according to an Anti-Defamation League survey released earlier this year. A disproportionate number of the respondents were women, with gender-based harassment affecting 24 percent of women as opposed to 15 percent of men.

A 2017 report from Pew Research Center found similar results – women were nearly twice as likely as to say that they had been targeted because of their gender.

Increasingly tech giants have been facing pressure in regard to how they treat content on their platforms.

YouTube said over the summer that it was updating its hate speech and harassment policies following public outcry over the harassment of Vox journalist Carlos Maza on its platform. The company is now facing a lawsuit from a group of LGBTQ video creators who are accusing the video-sharing platform of discriminating against their content.

Featured Clips

John Nichols, national affairs correspondent for the progressive magazine The Nation, says he thinks Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) brought forward appropriate charges against the officer who knelt on George Floyd's neck before he died.

David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, said Friday that the Federal Reserve’s drastic expansion of efforts to bolster the U.S. economy in March amid the coronavirus pandemic has contributed to the stock market’s quick rebound.